Thursday, 28 January 2010

As mentioned previously, we replayed the Ambush Alley Turkey Shoot scenario a week later, but this time with a few modifications:

Marines were dropped from Recon (d10) to standard (d8).

No APC was taken (again).

An extra Hotspot was added to the table bringing the total to 5.

The table layout was also a bit tighter than previous.
In addition, this time we had two players (myself and Adam) playing the Regular fireteams, while Brad took the Insurgents again.

With two players as Regular, we opted to allow the situation where we could end up with 2 Fog Of War (one per Regular Player) per turn.

Part way through the game, we realised that this was a bit of overkill, so we drew two assets (suggested by Insurgent commander Brad to redress the situation we'd found ourselves in) and went back to maximum of one Fog of War per turn.

The Regulars moved forward just fine to begin with.
But with the Fog of War flying thick and fast, the Marines got pinned down in the alley just beyond the target building.

They were attacked by friendly fire (mortars and air strikes - luckily this A-10 could hit a barn door!),

3 technicals,

and a carload of insurgents.

Just when these threats appeared to have been neutralised, the Insurgents torched the target building (Fog of War "Fire! Fire!" card) , rendering the mission a failure!

Luckily, while they had been pinned down in the alley, a secondary mission to investigate hostages being held in the area had been radioed through.

So the Regular teams quickly set out to attempt to free them, despite now being low on ammo ("Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition" Fog of War).

After assaulting the building, the hostages were rescued, but by this time each Marine fireteam was nursing casualties, with one man dead.

We finished the game there because we were over time, but hopefully it was a very enjoyable game for all! Especially Brad and his team of pyromaniac Insurgents!

I'll be starting to shoot a Tin Pot Little Country comic for this engagement over the next few days.
I'll put a quick post up on this blog to let you know as the pages go up on TPLC.

Wednesday, 27 January 2010

This is a report on my initial run of Turkey Shoot.
We've run the game subsequently with some changes after this run through, and it was a completely different game. More details on that coming soon...
Okay, so back at the game on the 16th Jan:
Turkey Shoot is a scenario where a squad of Marines must escort a sniper team to a position where they can engage targets "off table". The Marine Squad must keep the team alive for 3 turns on the roof, and then exfil off the edge they started at.
The Scenario as written has a full squad of US Marines (3 fire teams and a squad leader) protecting two snipers and accompanied by an LVTP7.
I didn't have a suitable APC available, and it seemed overkill (more on that soon) so we dropped it from the game. It should also be noted that the Marines themselves were Recon Marines. This meant that they were rolling a d10 rather than the standard d8 for trained troops.
Even without the APC we were soon to find that this scenario would be a whitewash for the Regular player.
The Regular team stepped off and engaged an Insurgent RPG team on a nearby building. The threat was neutralised, but during the shooting roll, a Fog Of War card was triggered! "The Colonel says what?!?" meant that the Regulars were pinned in place for a turn, unable to move forward.
In the mean time, the Insurgent player took the opportunity to occupy the target building....
And prepared to spring a trap on the Regulars....

However, this where the Recon Marines stepped up!
They demolished the ambush on the left hand side of the road, leaving one man standing.
In a later turn, this one mad insurgent managed to skirt around the fireteam that had engaged his group to charge another team from behind....
He was quickly dispatched.

Meanwhile, on the right hand side of the road, the Marines in position there had achieved a similar result.
As you can see, machete-wielding Insurgents are hardy indeed!

At this point the Insurgent group in the Target Building began engaging the Regulars.
Their shooting was inaccurate, and over the next couple of turns, their numbers were whittled away from 6 down to 2.

The Insurgents had received some reinforcements by this stage, but due to a lucky break on the Fog Of War, the "What's this made of....Swiss Cheese?!?" card rendered them vulnerable to the Marine Fireteam holding that arc.

It was around this point that Brad failed the rolls to bring 21 fresh insurgents onto the table!

However, luck was not completely against him, as another Fog OF War ("Contact!") provided him with another squad of Insurgents. These, however, were still unable to cause casualties on their Marine foes.

At this point, the Marines reached the building and began clearing it:

After the building was cleared, the sniper team swung into action and began to engage their "off-table" targets.

Some further reinforcements for the Insurgents was "too little, too late"....

...and the Marines exit the area with no casualties!

In the post game wash up, we believed that the Marines were too strong (and we didn't even use the APC!) and that at least one more insurgent hotspot (there were only four) was required.
In the second game played recently, we dropped the Marines to "Trained" (d8) and added an additional hotspot to bring the total to five.
But more on THAT game for another post!

Sunday, 24 January 2010

Just in the middle of packing up from another Ambush Alley game.
We played Turkey shoot again, but with some modifications.
The previous play last week (which I still have yet to write up) was a bit of a walk in the park for the Regulars.
This week we down-scaled the regulars and became a far more challenging proposition. And a lot of fun!
This week's game is going to get a proper write-up. The game from last week is now going to receive an abridged AAR.
Stay tuned.....

Thursday, 21 January 2010

In a relentless return to form, work has gotten busy and I haven't had time this week to put together the AAR for the "Turkey Shoot" Ambush Alley game.
Thankfully with Australia Day coming up next week, I intend to rectify this.
Return to your duties......

Monday, 18 January 2010

Well I had some fun on the weekend playing Ambush Alley with Brad.
We played Turkey Shoot this time.
Regulars won, but from re-reading some of the forums, it looks like we may have played the Insurgents slightly wrong. Not sure it would have made a significant difference however.
I'm planning on having up a proper AAR later this week, but in the interim......

While I was setting up, my wife came along and started having a look at the figures, etc.
Then things got a little silly:

Friday, 15 January 2010

A couple of quick pics of the two buildings and some quick wall sections for the game tomorrow night.
I'm not going to have time to apply the plaster and have it dry, and clean up the surfaces ahead of the game, so I'll leave them in raw cork for the moment. Both the buildings and the walls will be plastered eventually - probably next week.
I'l got to do some work around the house tomorrow, but hopefully I can put out another couple of walls ahead of the game.

Wednesday, 13 January 2010

I just had my Birthday present from my wife and daughter turn up at work.
You'll all just have to wait until Feb 23rd to see what it is!
Unfortunately, I'm also going to have to wait that long....... :(

Tuesday, 12 January 2010

I'm trying to keep some momentum on modelling for as long as i can, so last night I trimmed and based the LRRP platoon from Flashpoint that I got for Christmas.
These were old figures in the old packaging that I picked up from Drew at Dragonfire. I know that Flashpoint is working through doing a refresh on the figure ranges, but I don't think they've done the LRRPs yet.
Across the 30 figures there appears to be 10 sculpts - not necessarily 3 of each.
The scults look quite good, plenty of sneaky movement poses!

You can click the images of the sculpts for a larger view.

I picked doing these first-up because I figured that I could get away with only painting and basing a smaller number (maybe 10?) to provide a patrol to go up against a larger number of either Local Force or Main Force VC for Ambush Valley.

So next up, I'll be cracking a pack of VC.....which will it be?.......
(oooh the suspense!)

My order from The Flying Mule arrived today. Very prompt service.
3 USMC Hueys:
There are a couple of reasons why I purchased these:

As a pre-painted diecast, there is nothing more for me to do. No gluing, no painting, no basing.

They are comparatively cheap. These were US$7.99. Flying Mule also has 1/100 UH-1s with an airborne scheme as well for US$9.99. The very nice looking (but also requiring assembly, painting, etc.) Hueys from Battlefront are AU$30 (US$28). I bought all three of these for less than the cost of one from Battlefront.

Here is a zoom in of the helo with Irregular Modern US disembarking:

As you can see, 1:100 is actually just a little small against most 15mm (really 18mm) figures.
I have the same problem with the HMMWVs from QRF.
You can get 1:87 (HO) scale UH-1s from Flying Mule and other places as well. I have also seen UH-1 gunships in 1:87. I avoided 1:87 this time around because I didn't want the helo to be out of scale with other vehicles. We'll see how it goes......

Edit: Some discussion in the comments below (notably from Geoff at QRF) indicates that I'm wrong about the scale comparison. After a 2nd and 3rd look, I'm very happy with the scaling.